Why Bold Documentaries Get Few Oscars

By Janet Maslin

Published: March 22, 1998

THERE'S no such thing as a safe Oscar bet, except the excellent chance that ''Men in Black'' will trounce ''Mrs. Brown'' in the Best Makeup category tomorrow evening. But it looks as if this year's Academy Awards mean smooth sailing for a certain seafaring legend, a sign that much is right with the movie world. This year, as Hollywood rediscovered its inner storyteller the nominations took a turn for the traditional. They did that so consistently that voters must have found themselves with considerable hairsplitting to do.

Academy members have had to decide whether the night's biggest comeback kid came back from the '70s (Julie Christie, Peter Fonda, Burt Reynolds) or the '30's (Gloria Stuart)? Who's the best British actress in a Miramax costume drama, Judi Dench or Helena Bonham Carter? Which lovable indie underdog wrote himself the best chance for a Best Actor Oscar, Matt Damon or Robert Duvall? Soon we'll know.

But we know this much already: the winner of the night's biggest backhanded honor is Errol Morris, director of the visionary documentary ''Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.'' Mr. Morris, whose film was widely lauded by various critics' circles, is the recipient of an Oscar snub that places him in fabulous company. He joins such documentary giants as Frederick Wiseman and the Maysles brothers in never having been recognized by the Academy for feature-length filmmaking.

So his latest film now stands alongside such documentary landmarks as Michael Apted's ''28 Up,'' Michael Moore's ''Roger and Me,'' Claud Lanzmann's ''Shoah,'' Steve James's ''Hoop Dreams,'' Terry Zwigoff's ''Crumb'' and Penelope Spheeris's ''Decline of Western Civilization.'' None of these won an Academy Award in the best documentary category. None was even nominated. Let's not forget that this is the race in which ''The Sorrow and the Pity'' (1970) lost out to ''The Hellstrom Chronicles,'' a colorful study of bugs.

In the case of Mr. Morris, whose ''Gates of Heaven,'' ''Thin Blue Line'' and ''Brief History of Time'' also failed to catch Oscar's blind eye, there is even a further slight. It arises from a nominating process which, after several recent improvements, still has a long way to go. Documentary submissions to the Academy are divided into three groups, then each of these groups of films is sent to a separate screening committee. Two are in California. The third, described by one member as ''pitifully small,'' is in New York.

Members, who have perennially shown preferences for films about the Holocaust, the disabled, hard-working artists and inspirational programs in the inner city, are volunteers. Aside from interest, their main qualification is having enough free time for this laborious job. (It grew more demanding after the committee that had been assigned to watch the 1994 ''Crumb'' turned it off almost immediately. Now voters are required to watch entries at least a third of the way through.) Each committee picks five favorites, leaving 15 films on the short list for the award. But because Mr. Morris's film failed to pass muster with its preliminary committee in California, it didn't even make that top 15.

The injustice of that goes well beyond Mr. Morris's hurt feelings, although he claims not to have any. (Told by Michael Barker of Sony Pictures Classics that he had failed to land a nomination, Mr. Morris pointed out that if he hadn't pleased the Academy with a film that got a man off Death Row or a study of one of the most famous scientists in the world, what could he expect from one about man's efforts to control and fathom nature that features topiary gardening, lion taming, robots and rodents?) It's an oversight that reflects the Academy's chronic failure to recognize brave, innovative work in the single branch of filmmaking where Oscar's help could mean the most.

Documentaries don't automatically find their way to the multiplex. They're lucky if they make it to the big screen at all. (And being shown on television anywhere in the world can render a film ineligible for Oscar consideration. Another wonderful 1997 documentary, ''East Side Story,'' a witty exploration of movie musicals made behind the iron curtain, was financed through an arrangement with European television. That took it out of the Oscar race.) Unless their subject matter is sensational, they don't easily draw crowds.

And they must contend with the preconception that a documentary is less thrilling than an event movie full of car chases, even though the opposite is so often true. The whole genre suffers when Oscar validates what one Academy official calls ''a medicinal view of the documentary.'' Yet Oscar voters, who often seem to care more about castor-oil subject matter than about genuinely daring filmmaking, continually validate the idea that documentaries are dull. No point even in wondering where ''Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan,'' a gutsy, painful film about an artist's graphic masochism, wound up in this year's pre-selection process.

The most distinguished and hard-hitting of the five nominees this time may actually prove to be the winner, since its filmmaker has long been overlooked by the Academy in other ways. Spike Lee's somber, incisive ''4 Little Girls,'' an inquiry into the deaths of four Birmingham, Ala., schoolgirls in the notorious 1963 church bombing, is the most simple and forthright work Mr. Lee has ever done, and his film's quiet eloquence is unmistakable.

One way or another, the winner will probably be an examination of past atrocities, since the other strong candidate is ''The Long Way Home.'' Timed to the 50th anniversary of Israel's sovereign statehood, the film uses devastating archival scenes of concentration camp inmates in the period immediately after World War II to describe the new difficulties they faced after being liberated. Another outstanding nominee is ''Waco: the Rules of Engagement,'' a lengthy investigation into the deadly cult-F.B.I. standoff in Texas.

EACH of these deserves its place on the list, but it's a different story with the leaden ''Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life.'' Complete with blandly adoring viewpoint and the standard mixture of old photographs and talking heads, this is the kind of plodding account that keeps the documentary so marginalized for most movie audiences.

Equally uninviting is the fifth nominee, ''Colors Straight Up,'' in which inner city teenagers participate in dance and drama programs while counselors tell them things like ''Remember, you can be a hero to yourself!'' and ''You can shape your dream!'' Beyond these platitudes, and beyond many self-conscious scenes in which all participants seem well aware of the camera, there is a perverse echo of true cinema verite classics like Frederick Wiseman's ''High School,'' in which the filmmaker's clear mission is to tell the truth, not package it. In any case, it's unimaginable that a paying audience -- the kind that made a modest success of ''Fast, Cheap and Out of Control -- would be drawn to this.

So Oscar's documentary nominations remain troubling. Once again, in a year with plenty of good material, the list validates the idea that a documentary is an ordeal, not a glimpse of the kind of honesty that fiction films couldn't make up. And the Errol Morrises remain out in the cold, but that has its compensations. Out there in this year's Oscar Siberia with Al Pacino, Leonardo DiCaprio, ''Ponette,'' ''Shall We Dance?'' ''Ma Vie en Rose,'' the cast of ''The Ice Storm'' and the phenomenal ensemble of ''L.A. Confidential,'' the company is awfully good.

Photos: A Wallflower -- Topiary garden in Errol Morris's documentary ''Fast, Cheap and Out of Control,'' ignored by the Oscars. (Nubar Alexanian); A Nominee -- From ''WACO: The Rules of Engagement,'' a study of the Branch Davidians' deadly clash with the F.B.I. (Fifth Estates Productions); A Favorite -- Commemorative plaque in Spike Lee's ''4 Little Girls,'' about the 1963 Birmingham, Ala., church bombing (David Lee).